Caliban's catechism

Caliban’s catechism (to his father on a day that’s ugly)

As a youth, I found I liked certain things. 
(They had been hiding between covers, as is the way of things written.)
“You can’t do that!” you said; what, pursue a desire as ambition?

“I think you are living in a fantasy world,” you said as I typed in the kitchen.  
I could do that, I thought; a life not ornamented but lived with imagination.  

“It is wrong to rebel,” said, while wishing they could, the conscientious butler, the hapless soldier, the punishing protestant.

You clearly meant business. Hamlet, you think, was just irresolute in facing the deed’s demand; Kate should have known that Petruchio is Boss; Juliet was unrealistic (what fool or poet lives for love?); and Dante’s pilgrim, you think, should not have wandered into the forest at all.

But I rebel and I will curse.  It is on the barricades that we can find the stone that the masons rejected, and it is there I will say the Shema.  What is universal is quite particular with me.  When we forget how to affirm we start by negating.  

So I will curse your name.  I can hardly say it otherwise.  I will change my name but only by deleting the given one that is yours.  Hegel would approve.  

And as the bully whose mask is insistence on the regime of mediocrity, I want you to know:

I will have children whose grandfather
is a black hole where the photo’s face was, 
as you so were to me. 
I will marry a woman of beauty, genius, and charm;
you are not invited to the wedding.  
I will publish books or some renown, 
and you are not invited to the ceremony.  
If I am tortured, or worse, no doubt by representatives of my country,
I won’t need to curse you, as it will be obvious.   

But maybe it is enough to try think at all.  
We want to say what is good and bad.  But,
Who is not passionate cheats calm.
Who is not damned cannot be blessed.
Who does not curse does not love.

I will say the name, for I must use it to curse.  
And maybe it is enough to try to think at all.  
For thinking is trying to think;
it is trying to make sense of shit that happens.
I can do that.  

As for the actions and speeches that make up a character, 
do me a favor and stay cursed,
in your spectral beatitude.
What’s so terrible about that?

Still: Blessing and curse only say how it is.
Who will construct, not decide, what it means?
How will we fabricate, not perform, what shall be done?